Dr. Joseph Rebehmed is an associate professor of bioinformatics in the Department of Computer Science and Mathematics. He joined the Lebanese American University as a visiting assistant professor in January 2016. He obtained a Master’s degree in Bioinformatics and a PhD in Computational Chemistry and Informatics (with the highest level of distinction) from the University Paris Diderot, France.

Research Interests and Projects

His main research interests include studying the relationships between the sequence, structure and function of proteins, their evolutionary conservation and their alterations upon mutations leading to diseases. He also has a large expertise in the field of protein structure prediction and protein-ligand interactions in complexes of pharmaceutical interests. During his postdoc at the Medical School of the University of Michigan, USA, they predicted the best ligand-protein complex for CXCR4-CVX15, the most difficult target in the GPCR-dock 2010 worldwide experiment.

Dr. Rebehmed’s research focuses as well on enzyme design, protein stability and dynamic, developing tools and machine learning applications. He loves everything that has to do with science.

He is currently serving on the editorial board of a research topic entitled “Advances in Molecular Docking and Structure-Based Modeling” for Frontiers in molecular biosciences and as reviewer for several journals. He is also a member of the International Society for Computational Biology and the Biophysical Society.

Outside of his professional life, he is cat person who enjoys reading, playing sports (tennis and swimming), traveling and cooking.

SDGs Research Mapping

Dr. Joseph Rebehmed conducts research relevant to the following SDGs:

Selected Publications

1. “iPBAvizu: a PyMOL plugin for an efficient 3D protein structure superimposition approach” Guilhem Faure, Agnel Praveen Joseph, Pierrick Craveur, Tarun J. Narwani, Narayanaswamy Srinivasan, Jean-Christophe Gelly, Joseph Rebehmed*, Alexandre G. de Brevern Source Code for Biology and Medicine, 2019
2. “Investigation of the impact of PTMs on the protein backbone conformation” Pierrick Craveur, Tarun J. Narwani, Joseph Rebehmed, Alexandre G. de Brever Amino Acids, 2019, 51(7), 1065-1079
3. “A topology-based investigation of protein interaction sites using Hydrophobic Cluster Analysis” Alexis Lamiable, Tristan Bitard-Feildel, Joseph Rebehmed, Flavien Quintus, Francoise Schoentgen, Jean-Paul Mornon, Isabelle Callebaut Biochimie, 2019, 167, 68-80
4. “Enhancing the Activity of a Dietzia sp. D5 Baeyer‐Villiger Monooxygenase towards Cyclohexanone by Saturation Mutagenesis” Serena Bisagni, Milad Abolhalaj, Alexandre G. de Brevern, Joseph Rebehmed, Rajni Hatti‐Kaul, Gashaw Mamo ChemistrySelect 2017, 2(24):7169-7177
5. “The respective roles of polar/non polar binary patterns and amino acid composition in protein regular secondary structures explored exhaustively using hydrophobic cluster analysis” Joseph Rebehmed, Flavien Quintus, Jean-Paul Mornon, Isabelle Callebaut Proteins: Structure, Function and Bioinformatics 2016, 84(5):624-38
6. “Enzymatic Synthesis of Galatosylated S/T Derivatives by β-Galactosidase from E. coli” Sooyoun Seo, Joseph Rebehmed, Alexandre G. de Brevern, Salwa Karboune International Journal of Molecular Sciences 2015, 16 (6): 13714-13728
7. “Expanding the SRI family of domains: a common scaffold for RNA polymerase II PCTD binding” Joseph Rebehmed, Patrick Revy, Guilhem Faure, Jean-Pierre de Villartay; Isabelle Callebaut. FEBS letters 2014, 588 (23): 4431–4437
8. “PTM-SD: a database of structurally resolved and annotated posttranslational modifications in proteins” Pierrick Craveur, Joseph Rebehmed, Alexandre G. de Brevern. Database 2014 (2014: bau041).
9. “Cis-trans isomerization of omega dihedrals in Proteins” Pierrick Craveur, Agnel Praveen Joseph, Pierre Poulain, Alexandre G. de Brevern, Joseph Rebehmed*. Amino Acids 2013, 45(2): 279-89
10. “Evolution study of the Baeyer-Villiger monooxygenases enzyme family: Functional importance of the highly conserved residues” Joseph Rebehmed, Véronique Alphand, Véronique de Berardinis, Alexandre G. De Brevern. Biochimie 2013, 95(7):1394-402

Academic Degrees

• PhD in computational and theoretical chemistry, University Paris Diderot, France, 2009
• MSc in Bioinformatics, University Paris Diderot, France
• MSc in Biochemistry, University Saint-Joseph, Lebanon
• BSc in Biology, University Saint-Joseph, Lebanon